


Ten conversations

by tsunkiku



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, M/M, follows events post WttM, no one is allowed to be happy in anything i write ever
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 21:26:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12262398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunkiku/pseuds/tsunkiku
Summary: Yuri Plisetsky didn’t want to talk.Talking wasted time. Talking solved nothing. Talking made everything so much more complicated.Words were a carousel. Conversation made him dizzy.Why couldn’t they just carry on as they were?





	1. Chapter 1

Yuri Plisetsky didn’t want to talk.

Talking wasted time. Talking solved nothing. Talking made everything so much more complicated. 

Words were a carousel. Conversation made him dizzy. 

Why couldn’t they just carry on as they were? 

Yuri glared at Otabek’s back as the older boy led them down an empty stairwell, their sneakers groaning on cement. Every step they waded into the silence was deafening, but Yuri thrust his hands into the pockets of his jersey and huffed, refusing to be the one who spoke first. It was Otabek who had wanted to have this stupid ‘talk’ in the first place, so it was up to him to speak; or not. The silence endured as Otabek led them, further and further, to seemingly nowhere. Yuri began to wonder if Otabek really had a destination in place, or if he was just trying to buy himself time. After all, he had looked sort of shocked that Yuri had even agreed to speak with him in the first place. Perhaps he hadn't actually prepared himself at all.

How had it gotten to this point? Yuri could still remember when the world had fallen to pieces from the tips of Otabek’s fingers. He could remember the ecstasy that bloomed in his gut, overflowing, boiling everything else to nothing. 

Otabek had made him promise that they’d keep in touch, and really, Yuri had tried his best. He’d replied to his messages, most of the time. He’d answered every skype call he was awake to receive, at least at first. What the hell more could Otabek possibly want? More of him, clearly, and Yuri refused to open his hands and let it be wrenched from him. 

He was tired of Otabek going nowhere.

“Hey,” Yuri stopped abruptly, stiffening as Otabek himself halted, and turned, hands poised stiff at his sides. 

Once, Yuri had thought that Otabek’s face was unfalteringly stoic, but months of careful study had taught him to know better. He poured over every morsel Instagram held out in offering, lying awake in bed, the glow of his phone stinging his eyes (he told himself). He couldn’t say why it was easier indulge in lonely pining, than just respond to Otabek’s damn messages already, but it was. It was simpler to stare at him and remember the night in Barcelona when Otabek had mattered more than anything in the whole wide world. Simpler, and it hurt less.

That night was gone. It was vapour. It was a memory that was a splinter underneath his fingernail that he couldn’t quite tug free. Every time Otabek looked at him with that face, those eyes, it dug even deeper, splitting him open.

“Yuri.” Otabek’s throat bobbed as he sought out words. What was the use in talking if neither of them knew what to say? “Why are you avoiding me?”

He should have expected it, guessed the trajectory of the blow before it fell, but Yuri still felt himself flinch. Avoid Otabek? Ignore him? Nothing could be further from the truth. He breathed Otabek. He lived for those seconds on the ice when Otabek had looked at him like he was sun and the moon and every single star; those seconds when he, stupidly, had believed it and let the feeling choke his heart and stutter his breath.

And that, of course, was why. When he'd said to Lilia he would sell his soul to her, it hadn't just been empty words. This was what it meant to give over every part of himself in pursuit of his dream. Otabek’s hands and Otabek’s love didn’t fit. They blotted out the sky. They squeezed the life from everything else Yuri thought he adored. If he let them be part of his life, like a weed it would choke the vitality out of the things that should have mattered the most. 

[i]You're only sixteen[/i], he could hear Lilia say, the rough edges of her voice made smooth as she comforted him in place of his mother. [i]There are lots of boys[/i]. 

Somehow, Yuri made his lips move. He’d remember the words later because he couldn’t hear them now, not with the blood pounding in his arms and the ache in his chest that throbbed like a burn left bare to the cold snap of air. “I was busy. I’m always busy. Skating is what matters most to me, Otabek, and if you can’t handle that, then…”

Then, what? The quiet that stretched out between them felt empty, hollow space, the silence after a gun shot. 

Otabek had shot him too, once: Yuri had felt the bullet sink and settle into his chest back then and still felt it now.

He cradled it for the last time, as he turned away.

“Katsudon’s free skate is next,” it was an excuse, a reason to run away, and Yuri almost hoped that maybe Otabek would call him out on it.

He didn’t.

He couldn’t.

They both knew it.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you when I see you, right?”

“Yeah,” Yuri didn’t risk one last look. He didn’t want to remember Otabek like this, with tears in his voice and resignation in his eyes, the knowledge that things would have never worked out the way they wanted sinking into his skin like a chill. “I’ll be waiting for you on the podium.”


	2. Chapter 2

Yuri could never forget that night. It had been electric. 

“It could be worse, you know.” The words were breaths of smoke that curled from his lips in tendrils of vapour, misting up his grin. Otabek didn’t smile often, and Yuri still felt the need to commit each one to another precious memory he clutched like so many pearls against his chest. “Yakov could have actually killed me.”

The response to his exhibition skate had been everything Yuri had dreamed of. First he had shocked the world by winning gold and beating Viktor’s world record, but it hadn't been enough. He could still remember the breathless buzz of his lungs as he had taken his first gasp of air as the screaming ignited like a discarded match into gasoline across the crowd. 

He could remember Lillia and Yakov, crimson and furious, and even worse he remembered the bite of Yakov’s hand as he’d seized him by the back of the neck to drag him away the moment he was within arm’s reach. He could remember, vaguely, their ranting, their fury, Lillia’s disappointment and Milla’s hoots of admiration. He hadn’t had the chance to confront Viktor and the pig, but he’d glimpsed them from afar before Yakov had shepherded him away. He’d seen their smiles; hated them. They weren’t meant to be grinning like idiots, they were meant to be floored; humiliated! They had tried to upstage him and failed. How they could stand there and still be cheering his name? Yuri would never understand.

Perhaps it didn't matter. Viktor and Katsudon and all the rest were a thousand miles away when Otabek was warm by his side. Barcelona lay out below in a dark carpet of a thousand different lights, dwarfed by the sky that held a thousand more.

Yuri was staring at his hands, folded on his lap, remembering how it had felt when Otabek had torn his gloves off. For the briefest of seconds, he’d felt the heat of his breath naked on his skin, twinned in kind with the writhing heat that had simmered in his eyes. The entire skate had been incredible, he ought to be reliving every amazing, liberating second, but all he could think about was that one moment, separated from the rest. Yuri had never felt anything like that before! He had thought his heart was going to splinter his bones! It had been more than just the skate, more than knowing that he was beautiful and fantastic in every way he wanted, it was more than beating Kastudon, it was..

This time, it was Yuri reached out. Otabek’s gloved hands felt large in his own, but their fingers wove together as though they fit perfectly. Yuri had always hated his hands, small and dainty and girly, weak; nothing like the man he wanted to be, or wished he was, but wreathed in Otabek's, he no longer felt inferior. Relieved, in fact, that they both had hands that slotted together as a pair. He loved the way he was made in that moment. 

Otabek said nothing, just squeezed.

“Without you, I could never have done it. Not the glove thing, or the skate, or anything. I…,” Yuri’s heart was thudding in his throat.

The lights swarmed in his vision as he forced out every syllable. He needed to say it now, before shame and time dismantled whatever fragile thing he and Otabek had found in the night sky of this cold city. He would return to Russia, Otabek, Kazakhstan. They hadn’t talked about what they’d do when that happened; they hadn’t talked much about anything apart from skating. Yuri knew it was just like him. Skating was everything. Otabek wouldn’t demand anymore. It was for the best. There wasn’t enough room in his chest for the way that single moment had made him feel. “I’m glad we got to meet again.”

The silence stretched out for almost a minute before Otabek finally responded. “Feels like fate,” a pause, and Yuri heard him smiling and felt his heart crack, “I’m glad, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> very short stuff, sorry! hope you enjoy anyway.
> 
> thank you for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> welcome 2 the sadness
> 
> hello! this was originally just a short collection of otayuri fic prompts posted to tumblr. i will eventually add to them when i get the chance, but i wanted to post them here to encourage me to actually deal with them jgkhgf.
> 
> as usual thank you so much for reading!


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